Pixelmator Team Releases Pixelmator

“After two months of bug squashing we are very excited to finally release Pixelmator,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “With its use of latest Mac OS X technologies, breakthrough ease-of-use, innovation and low $59 price tag we think all Mac users will find Pixelmator very useful and fun.”

Built from the ground up on a combination of open source and Mac OS X technologies, Pixelmator features powerful selection, painting, retouching, navigation, and color correction tools, and layers-based image editing, GPU-powered image processing, color management, automation, and transparent HUD user interface for work with images.

Mac iSight users will enjoy Pixelmator’s New Layer from iSight feature that allows taking a snapshot with Mac’s built-in video camera and adding the snapshot as a layer in composition. The Photo Browser palette in Pixelmator offers quick access to iPhoto Library, events, albums, Smart Albums, and pictures in the user’s Pictures folder. Best of all, the user can just drag-and-drop any of those images as layers in Pixelmator composition.

Pixelmator is based on Core Image and OpenGL technologies that use Mac’s video card for image processing. Core Image and OpenGL utilize the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. And if a high-performance card with increased video memory (VRAM) is present, the user will find real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of Pixelmator operations, including editing tools, color correction tools, and filters. Pixelmator is lightning-fast on the latest PowerPC and all Intel-based Macs.

Comments

Great! I was just taking a look to see if you could already download Pixelmator and yes! I’m now trying the demo and it looks great. I think I’ll return shortly to buy Pixelmator.

Arjan -
September 25th, 2007 at 7:45 pm

Even that watermark in the demo looks good — at first I didn’t realize that the ink-drop on some PNG I exported was not on the original image :-)

Darryl -
September 25th, 2007 at 7:57 pm

Pixelmator is incredible! There are so many great features that are so much more complicated in the GIMP or Photoshop. Thanks for bringing these advanced capabilities to the rest of us! Keep up the good work!

I’ve just been playing with this for a few moments and I must say I’m absolutely wowed at the amount of polish and cool things in this app that I’ve noticed so far. I love that the interface has a ton of animations and things that make the experience a lot more fun. My first impression is extremely positive.

britt -
September 26th, 2007 at 2:29 am

It’s not your iMac; mine does it too…. and from the crash traces I’m getting, it *looks* like it’s the frameworks that are going off into la-la land; but I’m still looking into this (needs more regression testing).

40 x 60 x 300dpi at 32-bit-float, 4 channel (what the GPU runs at) works out to about 3.2 GB; a 32-bit app only has 2GB of available address space (the other 2GB is reserved by the OS). Unless either 1) the entire framework is written to handle images in chunks, with a 64-bit image address space implemented in software; 2) the app is 64-bit end-to-end; or 3) enough of the app is aware of the problem to feed the framework pixel data in chunks — you won’t be able to handle images >2GB… and in practice, substantially less (into that 2GB of address space, must fit the program’s code, undo buffers, etc). At 8-bit integer, 4 channel per pixel, that image size comes out to about 824MB… it fits, but it’s still quite bulky.

Umm… just curious… what are you doing that’s 3.3 x 5 feet that needs to be 300dpi?

Tried it and I can see the potential, but right now its unfortunately unusable.

Let me explain why. I’m working on a 1.66 Ghz Core Duo Mac Mini. Works very nice with Photoshop CS3, so I don’t think it’s underpowered. When workin in pixelmator with a reasonable amount of layers some tools become slow as molasses. Especially the type tool. It crawls down to a speed that’s simply unbearable and thusly unusable (yes I’ve got 2 GB of RAM and no other performance issues with this machine).

Right now pixelmator is a nice retouch tool. But we have those like sand on a beach. I really am looking forward to pixelmator becoming an image creation tool, but for that it lacks too many essential features (yet). This is what I’d need for pixelmator to become feasible as image creation tool:

1) Drawing tools all need to remember their own brush setting. For now when I change brushes in the Eraser tool this will change the brush tip in the brush tool accordingly. Not good.

2) Filters need to be non-destructive. This is what every other Core-Graphics-utilizing app is doing (Live Quartz, Image Tricks, Imaginator). Why o why wouldn’t pixelmator do this? If you brag about how 10.4-ish your app is, this is the first thing I’d expect this app to be able to.

3) Essential filters/effects missing. No drop shadow filter. Can this be? We’re in 2007 and this is essential. If I have to start making extra layers or layer masks and blur them for shadows etc. I might as well use the GIMP. Other essential and useful filters (adding borders, inner shadows, gradations on non-transparent parts of the layer etc.) are missing, instead a bunch of flashy and useless filters are there.

4) No vector/shapes handling. For creating graphics having vector shapes to create smoothly curved objects is essential. I just don’t want to have to cut and paste back and forth between pixelmator and a vector graphics tool just for basic shape creation and adjustment.

5) Too much mousing. There are still a few essential tools that have no shortcut. Transform/Free Transform e.g. needs a keyboard shortcut. Its one of the most tools ever.

I can see the potential for this app, and welcome this new approach, but unless there’s quite some functionality added it won’t cut the cheese and definitely won’t dethrone Photoshop (hey and I believe you’re the David who can give Goliath a run for its money!).

P.S. Having said above, I still think it’s a great app, nevertheless I’m still holding back my money. I want to believe, guys. And I know you’ll blow me away with version 1.2 or 1.5. Rock on!

dude -
September 26th, 2007 at 2:37 am

“2) Filters need to be non-destructive. This is what every other Core-Graphics-utilizing app is doing (Live Quartz, Image Tricks, Imaginator). Why o why wouldn’t pixelmator do this? If you brag about how 10.4-ish your app is, this is the first thing I’d expect this app to be able to.”

This is ***very*** computationally expensive. Don’t think that just because “CoreImage” is involved that it’s magically lightning fast no matter what you’re doing.

britt -
September 26th, 2007 at 3:05 am

>> This is ***very*** computationally expensive

Not necessarily, depending on the operation stack in question — the other way to handle that without being computationally intensive is to cache the intermediate results (but, of course, that’s very *storage* intensive; and will just about require a full 64-bit implementation, with lots and lots of RAM; I could easily see maxing out a Mac Pro on a complex image targeted for print or film).

marlwin -
September 26th, 2007 at 3:22 am

I was somewhat skeptical about this but you did a very good job. It’s great for a first version.

some things I’ve noticed (on a short try):

-I really like the icons (in the toolbar) and how they are selected but … black cursors on black ???
-at what percentage is my image ? (no indications apparently)
-don’t like to have my new image fullscreen
-images are not very smooth when downsized (coreimage limitation ?)
-filling/selecting with magic wand are super slow

As a graphic designer I know I’m not the core audience for this product. More a competitor for Photoshop Elements I guess.
I find it too close to Photoshop with no real innovative feature (but I admit I didn’t dig too deep).
Anyway it’s good to have another graphic editor on the mac platform and Pixelmator is warmly welcomed.

All the best for future versions.

Edwards -
September 26th, 2007 at 3:30 am

Well, I downloaded Pixelmator a few hours ago, and here are my first impressions from using it:

“Oh dear God! The transparency! Why?! What did I do to deserve this?”

Ahem. Seriously, though, the transparency in all the windows is rather distracting when one has a palette (like, say, the Tools palette) over a complicated background (like, say, my desktop). I do like the effect of transparency in dialog boxes over the image you are editing, but it loses a lot when you’re looking though onto the text from dozens of icons scattered across your desktop. Perhaps an option to turn the transparency off, at least when working in windowed mode, would be in order?

Now, other problems and questionable user interface decisions I’ve noticed in the first hour or so of playing with the editor (don’t worry, I do go on to more favorable comments later):

1) It would be very nice if Pixelmator did not “fuzz” the pixels when one zoomed into the image. I prefer to have nice crisp pixels to work with when I’m zoomed in, rather than fuzzy blobs, where I can’t be quite sure which pixel I’m going to be editing when I click. This blurring is one of the things I hated most about Preview in the early versions of Mac OS X, and I cheered when it was removed. Should I buy Pixelmator, the blurring will definitely top my list of “most-hated features” for it, too.

2) What’s up with the string connecting some dialog boxes to the image window? As far as I can tell, it indicates where the effect you are applying will be centered, but that took a couple of minutes of testing to work out. To make things worse, the first time I encountered the string, it appeared to be connected to one of the controls on the dialog- given that it appeared to be attached to the dialog box on both ends, why would I connect it with being a positioning indicator?

3) The select box cursor can become totally invisible on neutral backgrounds, such as most of the canvas when you’ve filled it with 50% transparent rainbow gradient on a white background. I kept losing track of the cursor, and needing to move it entirely away from the canvas to find it again. I’m not sure how often this situation would come up in normal editing, but I would suggest trying to give that cursor a bit more contrast with all backgrounds.

4) The tool icons in the Tools palette look very good when selected, and thus blown up to double-size, but it can be hard to identify them when they are down at normal size. Identifying the tools gets even harder when the palette is hovering over a noisy background which shows through the transparent window, such as my desktop. Also, there is very little contrast between the black window and the black Magic Wand, Crop, and Text tools, making identifying those tools even harder.
Also, it took me a good twenty minutes to even notice that there even WAS something in the Move Tool’s location, and I still can’t tell what it looks like without putting my eye right up to the screen.

5) There is no indication whatsoever of what the tool you just clicked on actually does unless you hover over it long enough to see the tooltip with its name. While this isn’t a problem after one has been using the program for a while, it would greatly aid the discoverability of the program if something on-screen changed to give the name of the tool that is currently selected. Perhaps the title of the “Tool Options” window could change to, say, “Brush Options”?

6) Some sort of outline of what area the pencil and brush tools will be affecting would be nice, particularly when working with large brushes or at high zoom levels.

7) A way to edit the alpha channel as a separate grey-scale image would be very nice, but I’m not getting my hopes up. I’ve been looking for a program that does that for years, and I’m coming to the conclusion that if I’m going to get that feature for less than several hundred dollars, I’m going to need to write my own image editor.

———-

Now, lest you think that I am merely complaining about the program, I also ran into several features that I really liked.

1) Apart from the issues mentioned above, the program seems very user-friendly. If you’ve ever encountered an image editor before, you’ll be able to use Pixelmator, and there aren’t enough menus and sub-menus to make some commands impossible to find.

2) I really, really like the magnified view of the area surrounding the cursor for the color select tool. Also, I have run into situations where I’ve wanted to pull colors in from other places without needing to take a screenshot and then open it in the editor, so I appreciate the ability to do so.

3) One of my main criteria for deciding whether I’m willing to use an image editor is whether it includes some method for juggling the RGB channels, so I was glad to see that Pixelmator included that feature- and that it allowed for more detailed editing than just “swap channels”.

4) The method of expanding the selected tool up to double-size in the Tools palette when one clicks on it is very nice. I’ve never seen it used before, but it makes it instantly obvious which tool is selected, and looks great. I also like how you remembered to make the area immediately surrounding each tool button act like the button itself when clicked.

———-

Overall, despite the user interface unpleasantness, this is the best replacement for my ten-year-old Classic-only copy of PhotoStudio that I’ve run into in several years of on-and-off searching. If Pixelmator continues to fare as well over the next couple weeks, I’ll finally be able to declare myself free of any reliance on Classic.

Edwards

Edwards -
September 26th, 2007 at 3:34 am

Err, apologies for the novel-sized post, by the way. Take it as a compliment- I don’t spend that much time writing about something I don’t care about.

Edwards has just covered most of the points I wanted to make. I must say that I really like this application: it provides most of the features I use in Photoshop in a package that is less expensive, more user-friendly, and much faster. That having been said, I won’t be able to switch to it for normal use because of just a few missing features:

– Save for Web. This single dialogue box in Photoshop makes it infinitely easier to compress and save your images for use in a website. You don’t have to bother with the image maps: just provide some presets and a preview, and I’ll be set.
– Trim. Another one that saves me quite a bit of time, by cutting out any side of an image that is either transparent or just a monotonous expanse of colour.
– The History palette. Since you have multiple undos, this isn’t so much of an issue, but it would still be nice to have.

Overall, though, a very nice start. Can’t wait to see what you come up with next!

Michel Leist -
September 26th, 2007 at 7:05 am

Dear Pixelmator team,

congratulations to that beautiful 1.0 release.
i will sure give a try and im looking forward to replace PS CS3 with maybe the 1.2 or 1.5 or 2.0 release when it will be almost feature complete ;-) Also looking forward to the Leopard injected versions :)

A point I’d like to make (a feature missing from a Photoshop user) is that I can’t crop an image to a certain aspect ratio. Let me explain, if I want a 640×480 image from a portion of a 1200×1600 image in Photoshop I open the crop tool, type 640 480 in the tool options, drag my selection (it doesn’t constrain to 640×480 but to that aspect ratio) crop then resize to 640×480.

I’m looking forward to a future release of PixelMator, but for me that simple thing is a purchase-killer.

djt -
September 26th, 2007 at 7:40 am

My First impression is good to, but you’ll need to have a “Save to Web” option which allows me to export GIF, PNG and JPEG graphics and also a way to constrain and crop images to a certain pixel size. Pixels and bytes count! If you introduce these features, it’s a no brainer. Very nice so far!

Pixelmator looks as good as we could expect from the appetizing screenshots on the website. The basic functionality is here and the tools are OK. Unfortunately it does not “feel” as good as it looks.
As others have said already, keyboard interaction could be improved and this is particularly important for an image editing tool since one usually wants to stay as much focused on the canvas as possible. An easy example is using keyboard arrows to change tools options instead of having to click them or move sliders.
Pixelmator can also be quite slow unlike its description suggests. As soon as some blurring and several layers are used on a standard digital photo (6Mpixels), the interface isn’t very responsive. And this is with a MacBook 2Ghz with plenty of RAM so that should not be a hardware problem.

I won’t go well further even if there are plenty of things to say (take that as a compliment: the fact that people want the software to improve is because they value it). I think that Pixelmator should focus on “feeling” right, “feeling” even more Mac, before adding more and more features. First because if you start adding features on unpolished foundations, adding polish afterwards will be next to impossible. Then, because, feature-wise, you won’t be able to beat Photoshop before several releases, while you can easily beat Adobe on usability _now_.
I would also suggest to drop most of the superlatives from the web pages. Leave judgement to your users and describe your product with a neutral tone. If your tool is great, people will spread the word themselves. Furthermore, if people expect a fantastically-geat-fun-and-easy product and only find a “good” product, they will leave remembering that is was _not_ “fantastically-geat-fun-and-easy” instead of remembering that is was “good”. And it makes you sound like David Watanabe which is probably not something you want ;)

What an incredible piece of software! It has most of the features its famous and expensive competitor does and is really fast – I already tested it on an MBP 2,33 where everything just flies and on a Mini 1,66 and it’s still not too bad). Many thanks to all the developers involved in this project. I’m definitely going to get myself a copy.

Great application and a real competitor to Photoshop. Using it now and love it, looking forward to future releases.

Andrew -
September 26th, 2007 at 11:59 am

It’s functional and good for that price, yet I don’t like the all black/gloss interface. It needs the same smooth grey anodized aluminum feel that iTunes and Leopard have, otherwise it feels out of place. Other than that, the black fits in well in full screen mode.

Its been fun playing with Pixelmator, and I cannot argue with its value and functionality. The interface colors, however, make this software very difficult to use. For example, several of the palette icons are completely invisible on the black background. It worries me a little that a piece of visual design software would have such a fundamentally bad design choice. HUDs are nice every now and then, but Pixelmator appears to have gone overboard.

I see the same tendency continues in the forum — dark grey text on black background. Wow.

This looks like a very compelling product indeed. Can’t wait to go home and try it out. Before I plunk down $59 I have some questions.

First is RAW support. Sounds like you’re working on it. Any hint of a timeline for that? If I buy the product now, will I get RAW for free?

Second one is about upgrades. Will you charge for upgrades? Will it be another $59 fee? The nice thing about iPhoto/Adobe Elements/PS is that the upgrade costs are not an unknown. Any inkling of a cost structure in the future?

Nice work, especially if you think about the short development time. Although the application run’s quite smooth most of the time, it sometimes seems to freeze. Especially with the sharpen and blur brushes.

It would be nice to see tablet support in the future.

Keep up the good work!

Simon MTL -
September 28th, 2007 at 1:21 am

Britt: I do posters at that size… Also, Photoshop Elements 3 does it quite well and easily, even on a good old iMac G5… I’ve done smaller with Pixelmator at 640×480 and the software crashed the same way, so it’s not only the size of the canvas…….

A feature request that comes up often is RAW support. Now why the **** would people want a raw converter build into Pixelmator, in a world of Lightroom, Apterture, Phase One, and Iridient Digital’s splendid Raw Converter???

Some lacking features that break the Pixelmator-deal for me are:

No 16-bit processing. WTF… I don’t wanna rape my precious photographs with 8-bits per channel processing. An 8-bit greyscale image is then only 256 shades of grey. 16-bit is essential.

No tablet support… again… WTF… Can’t retouch without a Wacom tablet, I need the pressure sensitivity. Even Chocoflop and Acorn has that…

Some real substance, instead of just vidual candyfloss fluffy stuff… I don’t care about vortexes, twirls and all that crap. Give me a healing brush instead.

Zoom… I wanna be able to zoom freely. And see the zoom percentage. And with a non-blurred image. I have to be able to judge the sharpness of the image.

Less bugs please… Pixelmator chokes on simple operations. Force quitting is not supposed to be a feature right? If it is, please remove it from the next release;-)

The developers of Pixelmator are related to companies Jumsoft and BeLight – which are both companies who make great looking apps, yet apps that corrupt data. I speak from very frustrating past experiences with the apps Process, Live Interior and Swift Publisher. And the support is almost non-existing. It seems Pixelmator may be the same get-rich-quick scheme… I dunno though. Just be wary people.

PS: The betatester-offer was below dignity. Beta expires, you got 3 days to save $10, real version will come out AFTER offer expires… Well, you really are grateful towards your bughunting betatesters aren’t you…

Arthur -
September 30th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

it’s sad but you’re completely right.
Used the beta enough to come up with its many flaws. The lack of tablet support is ridiculous for any app even closely related to image editing but anyway they say it’s coming in the near future.
Let me state I’m not an adobe fan (hate enough the last FOUR versions of photoshop to use the painter + graphic converter combo whenever I can! Love working with real brushes and not silly menus)

Now if you want to enter the marvelous world of image editing (with a below $100 app) you have to be very specific in the offer, say beat the CS armada with a couple of nice feature they don’t have.
Or you have to offer a real new experience that even with it’s limitations offers a workflow so fresh and futuristic you can’t resist loading it side by side with ps.
Pixelmator has no ps-killer features (anything can be done with a plethora of sharewares combo or with ps itself) and the workflow is sooooo classic and retro. When I first saw the beta I thought how the hell you can beat ps with an exact replica of its interface?
On top of that the openGL/core image thing is not a real deal for pros because it translate into a mac-only product wich is a bummer in the pro market. Ok, Finalcut studio is great BUT it’s another story, from price to features.

Overall Pixelmator seems the usual amateur app that really does nothing new. In fact it’s loaded with fancy features for kids but for pros it’s bewildering in its lack of serious tools.
It a pity I know because I really hoped in a new competitor in this market and I will continue to hope an improvement with the next versions. Well, they have to improve nearly everything and to abandon this amateur approach.

Maybe in a cuople of years.
But first they have to adjust their target. I don’t know which path they want to take in the future but please come up with something pros can use. Up the price to $300, do a Pixelmator PRO version, flood the website with plugins with serious feature. Stop posting everywhere that Pixelmator is the next big thing and invest your money in a real app.

Didn’t want to interrupt the party, just my 2 cents.

Dama Bianca -
September 30th, 2007 at 3:28 pm

Well, when I posted before in this space about the fact that I was expecting something that could replace my using of Paint Shop Pro (I am a Windows switcher), it was said to me that I was totally crazy (or something similar…) to compare photoshop (ok, but I was speaking about photoshop elements!) and that new amazing piece of software that is pixelmator to paint shop pro…
Well, I want to say now to the person that said that: what do you use pixelmator (and others image editors) for? This software lacks of the minimum also to do very simple things.
Really, now I can say that pixelmator is not only not near (for nothing!) to paint shop pro, but is not near also to photoshop elements 2.
The things I care about were alredy said by other people. To speak would be only repetition.

This want not to be an harsh critic… because there are some things that put pixelmator over all the others image editors I have tried for mac, but it is a way to say that you have to work on this software very much. It has to be improved.
I think you can do a great piece of software also with the only reading of the critics and requests people has made here until now.
I am waiting to see the next pixelmator and for a .1 version this is anyway interesting. Keep it up!

Mac Campbell -
October 1st, 2007 at 5:10 am

“The developers of Pixelmator are related to companies Jumsoft and BeLight – which are both companies who make great looking apps, yet apps that corrupt data. I speak from very frustrating past experiences with the apps Process, Live Interior and Swift Publisher. And the support is almost non-existing. It seems Pixelmator may be the same get-rich-quick scheme… I dunno though. Just be wary people.”

@Oliver Nielsen -> I thought you were a bit of a jerk for writing that… I played with the demo… it was respectable for $59 (IMO) bought it, did my first little project (A card for a friend), I can no no longer open the Pixelmator file… Pixelmator crashes right away…

I am afraid you may have been on the money, and I just got burned! Hopefully the Pixelmator team will prove me and you wrong with updates and bug fixes (free) going forward.

Just echoing the sentiment that even though I’m not doing “professional” image work on my Mac at this point, now that I’ve been shooting RAW the difference between massaging at 16 bits as opposed to 8 is apparent in the results. I look forward to checking it out at 16 bits when it becomes available. But until then I think I speak for others when I say that regardless of the other features/not features, 8 bit doesn’t bring it to the starting gate for me.